shire. His knowledge of birds, Mr. Mackail tells us, was extraordinary; and he was continually surprising his friends with an unexpected acquaintance with modern science and industrial processes which he sometimes affected to despise. Unlike many of his literary and artistic friends, he took an eager and indeed an absorbing interest in politics and all matters relating to the public welfare; and he was, as we know, one of the most ardent propagandists and unflinching agitators of his day.
Morris was not only great as a man of genius and of general attainments; he was great in the high manliness and in the amplitude and richness of his nature. The impression of strength, of self-sufficiency, of action, of great individuality in him was felt by everyone in his presence. Among his immediate friends, many of them men of remarkable attainments, such as Burne-Jones, Philip Webb, Rossetti, Swinburne, and De Morgan, he was acknowledged the most masterful personality of them all. He occasionally showed a towering temper, but it was wholly without malice, and seemed given him merely by way of emblasonry. He was singularly unaffected, companionable, and good-humoured. There was not a particle of acidity or bitterness in him. He was simply incapable of cruelty or any act of meanness or oppression, of lying or pretence. And while one of the hardest-working, and in some respects most seriously minded men of his age, he was also full of jollity and boyishness, delighting in fun and merry-making, in games and story-telling, and in outings with friends. Limitations and even positive defects of character he had—they were conspicuous enough. But these notwithstanding, he had in him such an unusual combination of noble and delightful qualities, that he stands out as one of the grandest and most attractive personalities of our time.
And forth from his genius and character there sprang as a great flower his art, wherein was made manifest the word and teaching which, alike by precept and by the
